The State of Tier 9

I made a post on our guild forums the other day. The post asked if the way we hand out trophies is the best way. We normally use a DKP system for loot but have taken the trophies out of the DKP system and just /roll on them. Once you have gotten a trophy, you are not eligible for another until everyone that wants one has gotten one. It’s a fair system, I think.

Yesterday, I read a post at World of Matticus which discusses the trophies. It got me thinking and investigating a bit more.

Teir 9 is separated into 3 categories. The bottom T9 is barely better than T8.5 and depending on what you’re gearing for, it maybe worse. Comparing the T9 Helm to the T8.5 Helm you’ll notice “upgrading” to T9 loses you 2 stamina, some block rating, 4 defense and 4 dodge. While you gain 23 strength and 17 armor plus a little block value. it’s a slight upgrade for threat but who gears for threat anyway? It’s a wash for effective health and a downgrade for avoidance. It’s safe to say that blizzard made this version of T9 for people who were unable to run Ulduar 25 for T8.5 gear. This set is meant to get those people into TOC.

For the people who have been raiding Ulduar, we have T9.3 and T9.5. T9.3 trophies drop from the bosses in TOC 25. There’s 5 bosses which means 5 trophies. In a 25 man raid, that means 1/5 of your raid will get an upgrade. If you distribute the trophies as we do…it’ll take 5 weeks to get each of your raiders 1 piece of T9.3…10 weeks to get the 2 piece set bonus for everyone, which isn’t much different from Naxx or Ulduar. Naxx had 5 bosses who dropped T7 and Ulduar had 6 who dropped T8. I like the trophies because there’s none wasted. Somebody is going to need a trophy ever time we kill a boss. We don’t have to worry about our warlock finally getting his Teir head off of KT only to have the warrior/hunter/shaman token drop for the 5th week in a row.

Every week since TOC has been out we have fully cleared every boss available. After looking over my stats on the armory, I’ve noticed we’ve killed Anub 4 times and Beast 8 times. To this point my guild has seen 30 trophies drop, that means each person in the raid has 1 trophy and are working to get their 2nd. I think my problem with the tier gear this go around is two-fold:

#1 TOC is boring, it’s easy, it’s a joke. Yeah, Heroic mode is tough…maybe. It’s not really that tough, there’s nothing really different from the regular versions other than the bosses hit like freight trains. Certainly not any new boss abilities or mechanics like mimiron or vezax.

#2 With Icecrown moving at a rapid pace on the PTR, this is going to be a very short teir cycle. I am expecting to be walking into Icecrown with 2 piece T9.3 and 2 piece T8.5, unless Ony decides to drop a head piece for me or Jaraxxus wants to give me some legs or I can come up with 7k to craft a chest piece. Who knows, maybe now that summer is over, we can get our 25 man back on track and get some bosses in Heroic 25 man down and get some T9.5.